Sorry, not sorry, for bastardising Norm’s masterpieces. Cut me some slack here. It’s been raining constantly for a month. Never stopping to consider the Dementor level motivation crisis inflicted on those of us to whom outside is their best side. And okay it may not be full on Paired Animal vocalising navigational confusion as to the location of an Ark captain colloquially known as “Noah“, but nevertheless “fucking grim” is a baseline summary forecast for us Slitherati going mostly sideways.

I’ll admit to a slim possibility occasional dry spells may have intersected with my coping strategy of hiding under a blanket while whimpering gently. Previous strategies repurposed the shed roof as my rain jacket of choice as January dove Dante deep into “Fatman to the ShedMobile” turbo sessions. This year I’ve sacked that never-less-than-hurty contraption off with zero kilometres recorded. Some 400 under purgatory distances disguised as base fitness.

Can’t say I’ve missed it. Childish V signs represent my only interaction on passing the dusty static bike made ever more static through my non participation. The treadmill gets an easier ride especially as I’ve borked my knee having a) declared an aspirational target of a sub 50min 10km and b) attempting to run outside to see how well that went.

Not well. Not well at all. Running out of options, going to need to ride MTBs. Can’t even pretend with an MTB adjacent gravel ride having sold that hateful bastard child of a proper bike and something ruinously tarnished by the lycra fetishers. Usefully I have a shed full of bikes long on knobbles and short on tarmac.  Less helpfully only one of these is really suited for a winter campaign in the the FoD cosplaying as Flanders Fields.

It’s a good one tho. Fourth winter and absolutely the most fun you can have outside while avoiding a potentially lethal enema*. The rider tho is somewhat less committed. My good friend Matt firmly believes winter riding is the book of genesis in our riding calendar. See the mud and achieve righteousness though rain, cold and enduring misery. Suffering for the sunshine. Skills for the summer.

I tend to nod politely while wondering if medication may be the answer. Instead I offer a persuasive counter argument laying down the axiom that riding in winter is the embrace-the-grim bullshit we sell ourselves between being clean and being drunk. Shrink us to diodes and we’d gate ourselves in an electrical storm before being pulsed out to any pub rocking a lax policy on customers heavily encumbered by their own soil harvests.

So I’ve been getting out. Mostly in conditions characterised as “Greasy Snot Death“. GSD is a unique combination of soil and wet offering all the traction of moist glass. Sideways is mandatory, lying down often the best way to deal with what goes next. No tyre is going to save you.  it is enormous fun right up until the point it isn’t.  Especially when the forecasted “one dry night” was a misspelling of “Sleet? Fucking Sleet? Again? Is this some kind of test?

Shaking fists at an uncaring sky gets old pretty quickly. Talking of which, Haydn celebrated another successful rotation of the planet with an outing of his never less than amusing fat bike. We headed out in conditions best described as “bloody minging” but showed great fortitude not diverting straight to the pub**

We picked our trails carefully. And they picked us right back up. Fun times on loamy sand mostly impervious to 30 days of rain. We had a bit of a train going with H generating tidal surges with the woomp-woomp-woomp of his trail based paddle steamer way closer to my arse than I was entirely comfortable with.

“I can offer you a soft rubber interface” is not really the kind of thing you want to process when the cerebral loaf is attempting to pick non punt-y lines between sniper roots. Then “If it makes you feel better, think of it as being violated by a 70s space hopper”. I’ll be honest here, this did not make me feel better with the prospect of a 4.8 inch T-Boning probably increased my pace more than any skills course ever could.

Conditions being so perfect, we decided to head over to the next valley where the dirt was mostly hidden by seasonal streams. There were quite a lot of mildly concerning noises coming from behind, mostly in the hysterical giggle range and thankfully not so many scored for arboreal percussion***

A quick body count confirmed all bodies and no hanging limbs, which felt exactly the right time to head to the pub. The rain felt it had offered us enough respite and spattering quickly turned to potential drenching. More importantly my liver was 32 days distanced from a proper beer. I asked Matt if he’d consider closing the distance between rides end and a handy pump at 100 MPH.

First beer was off. That is God Level Trolling. The second one went down quite a lot better. The whole day was one of those where low expectations are the catalyst for fantastic memories. Nobody who doesn’t ride bike gets this. And I love it more exactly because of that.

Forecast shows fourteen more days of rain. Turbo gives me the side eye. Not interested. Outside is where the magic happens. Keep sending him up 🙂

*appreciate that’s a fairly low bar.

**mostly as it was 10am and nothing was open.

***not the case on Wednesday when Simon first smashed his love plums on a new trail probably not best ridden in those conditions, and then his still healing shoulder on the exit of the same trail. Being supportive types of chaps, we blamed his tyre choice 🙂